Harry looked at him. It wasn’t often he heard him sound so decisive. Bjørn Holm shrugged his shoulders. “If it’s recorded anything that can help solve the case, I don’t think Winter should get the glory.”
“OK?”
“On the other hand, you shouldn’t touch anything here either.”
“Because I’m a suspect,” Harry said.
Bjørn didn’t answer.
“That’s fine,” Harry said. “The ex-husband is always the first suspect.”
“Until you’ve been ruled out,” Bjørn said. “I’ll get hold of whatever the camera recorded. The middle tree, you said?”
“It’s not easy to spot,” Harry said. “It’s hidden in a sock the same colour as the trunk. Two and a half metres up.”
Bjørn looked amiably at Harry. Then the stocky forensics officer began to pad towards the trees with his surprisingly soft and extremely slow gait. Harry’s phone rang. The first four digits told him it was from a landline in the offices ofVG. The vultures scented carrion. And the fact that they were calling him meant that they probably knew the victim’s name and had made the connection. He rejected the call and put his phone back in his pocket.
Bjørn was crouching down over by the trees. He looked up and beckoned Harry over to him. “Don’t come any closer,” Bjørn said, pulling on a fresh pair of white latex gloves. “Someone got here before us.”
“What the fuck…?” Harry whispered. The sock had been pulled from the tree and was lying in tatters on the ground. Beside it lay the wreckage of the camera. Someone had stamped it to pieces. Bjørn picked it up. “The memory card is gone,” he said.
Harry was breathing hard through his nose.
“Pretty good going to spot the camera with its camouflage sock on,” Bjørn said. “You’d pretty much have to be standing here among the trees to see it.”
Harry nodded slowly. “Unless…” he said, and felt that his brain needed more oxygen than he could give it. “Unless the perpetrator knew the camera was there.”
“Sure. So who have you told?”
“No one.” Harry’s voice was hoarse, and at first he didn’t recognise what it was, the pain growing in his chest, trying to get out. Was he waking up? “No one at all,” Harry said. “And I set it up in complete darkness in the middle of the night, so no one saw me do it. No one human, anyway.” Then Harry realised what it was that was trying to get out. The shrieking of crows. The wailing of a madman. Laughter.
9
It was half past two in the afternoon, and most of the clientele looked up disinterestedly at the door when it swung open.
Schrøder’s Restaurant.
“Restaurant” was perhaps something of a misnomer, although the brown café did indeed serve a selection of Norwegian specialities, such as pork chops and dripping, but the main courses were beer and wine. The bar had existed on Waldemar Thranes gate since the mid-fifties, and it had been Harry’s regular haunt since the nineties. There had been an interval of a few years after he moved in with Rakel in Holmenkollen. But now he was back.
He sank down onto the bench by the wall at one of the window tables.
The bench was new. But apart from that, the interior had stayed the same for the past twenty years, the same tables and chairs, the same stained-glass ceiling, the same Sigurd Fosnes paintings of Oslo, even the red tablecloths with a white cloth set diagonally on top were the same. The biggest change Harry could remember was when the smoking ban came into force in 2004 and they repainted the bar to get rid of the smell of smoke. The same colour as before. And the smell of smoke never went completely.
He checked his phone, but Oleg hadn’t replied to his messages telling him to call him; he was probably in the air.
“It’s terrible, Harry,” Nina said, removing two half-litre glasses from in front of him. “I just read it online.” She wiped her free hand on her apron and looked down at him. “How are you doing?”
“Not great, thanks,” Harry said. So the vultures had published her name already. Presumably they had managed to get hold of a picture of Rakel from somewhere. And of Harry, of course. They had plenty of those in their archives, some of them so awful that Rakel had wondered if he couldn’t at least try to pose a bit better next time. She never looked bad in photographs, even if she tried. No.Hadnever looked bad. Fuck.
“Coffee?”
“I’m going to have to ask you for beer today, Nina.”
“I understand what’s going on, but I haven’t served you beer for—how many years is it now, Harry?”
“A lot. And I’m grateful for your concern. But I mustn’t wake up, you know?”
“Wake up?”
